Profit Sourcery

By Lauren Carter

Amazon vs. eBay

Many people have experience selling on eBay, even if that experience is just getting rid of old textbooks or clothes. Selling on Amazon is a very different process and it’s worth taking some time to get to know Amazon as a marketplace before diving in, even if you are a very experienced eBay seller. In this post we’re going to look at 6 ways in which Amazon and eBay differ.

Fees

Amazon charges a higher commission on sold items but there is no cost for listing a product. On eBay you pay to list products regardless of whether they go on to sell or not. On eBay you need to consider the cost of listing products which may not sell before the listing closes, meaning you need to pay again to relist and spend time relisting.

The Listing Process

On eBay you need to create listings yourself from scratch. It’s entirely up to you to take high quality photos to show off your product, write effective titles so that customers can find your product and great descriptions to answer all potential questions and encourage shoppers to buy from you. On Amazon listings already exist, you simply add your offering to the existing listing, there is no need for you to take photos or write descriptions unless you are the first person to sell the product (all products you see on your ProfitSourcery dashboard already have listings). Listing on Amazon is much easier and far less time consuming.

Not only is this more convenient for you, it’s a better experience for your customers. Scrolling through eBay search results and comparing offerings is a long difficult process. On Amazon you can visit the listing and easily compare offers on one page. This makes for a much better customer experience. The fact that Amazon listings are so uniform means the site is more consistent and therefore appears more trustworthy to your customers.

Fulfilment

As an eBay seller it is entirely up to you to store, pack and ship all of your orders. Of course you can also do everything yourself on Amazon but you also have the option to use Amazon’s FBA service. Fulfilment by Amazon means you can have your products stored at Amazon’s warehouse and they will package and ship your products when you make a sale. It is great to have this option particularly as your business grows and the number of orders because unmanageable. It does come at a cost but it is far cheaper than renting storage space and hiring somebody to help you with the shipment of orders.

Average Selling Price

The average selling price for products is higher on Amazon, many Amazon shoppers won’t look on eBay to see if they can get the product cheaper, they are a more affluent group and are happy to pay a little more. This means you could make a little more on each product you sell than you would by listing on eBay.

Amazon is a Competitor

This is both bad and good. Amazon sells through their site which means as a third party seller you are competing directly with a mega-seller. This is challenging but not an impossible task. On eBay you are simply competing with other third party sellers. The plus side to Amazon selling itself is that Amazon is able to offer services such as Amazon Prime. This attracts buyers to the marketplace and if you are selling through FBA you can make your products eligible for Prime. This means Amazon’s biggest spenders are encouraged to buy from you. Amazon Prime means shoppers get much faster shipping which is a great offering to have particularly around the holiday season when shoppers need their purchases quickly.

Customer Service Involvement

If you’ve sold on eBay you’ll know that it’s very common to receive messages from customers frequently. Shoppers on eBay are very likely to try to haggle on price and will send messages after purchasing asking about delivery etc. On Amazon, as long as the condition of your products is great and you ship goods on time, you are far less likely to receive messages from customers. On top of this if you are using FBA; Amazon will handle your customer service enquiries for you.